I am now 36K words into the second novel in the trilogy.
No response from an agent yet, but I’m going to get professional help with the query letter.
The novels have a premise, not a plot. Once I realized that this is not a problem, I turned from a woman who dreamily talks about the novels I’ll write to a woman who writes every day, unless I don’t. So I had three days where I produced less than 300 words total followed by 1700+ words in two days. 2000 words, five days, 400 words a day, not a great average but not shameful. The best part is, I now understand the writing process as 1) identifying who I want to write about and what motivates them 2) putting those people into conflict with each other, and then letting them use their skills to fix the problems or live with the results 3) busting up the writing into manageable chunks with definite lengths so that I can feel the progress I’m making 4) having as much fun as possible.
And some days I write 100 to 1000 word blogposts because not every thought and OOO CUTE PIC that flits through my admittedly housefly-like brain can get stuffed into the novels.
I am trying to write like a feminist, media-savvy and unabashedly socialist version of Eric Frank Russell. Hm. I said it. Wonder how much that will cost me in days to come. “Females” scarcely exist in his novels, and yet there’s something about the realism and humanity of his writing that I enjoy.
When I get stuck, I play my mandolin, watch my way through the Golden Age of Television, go for a walk with my former spouse, or kids, empty the dishwasher, make bread, work on other projects (Recovering Racist, The Book of Kind Words – exactly how it sounds, and my mOm’s been making suggestions about modern situations which need kind words, which is GREAT, Tarot for Atheists, Allegra’s Filkebuche, Broad Hints – a scraping of all my non fiction including quite a bit of humour, Oscar and his Family (a series of children’s stories regarding a non-traditional family), and a book of all my homilies which I will probably call “Not all Unitarians”.)
I’ve identified as a writer all my life, and now that I’m committed to writing every day, except the days I don’t, I feel like my life is better than it’s ever been. When sad things happen to me in real life, or cruel things, I can immediately turn to those chapters I’m working on which need that. When I’m happy, I’m more productive. Best of all are the days when I tell my mood, whether lethal or sadface or brittle or calm or goofy, “Stay put! I’ll deal with YOU later…” because those are the days I write a thousand words and never look up at the counter. YAY SCRIVENER.
